The men who had built the Brick House had framed the attic story of huge baulks of oak, posts and beams that looked like the halves of great trees, with struts and cross-pieces worked in quaintly at all angles. There was a long gallery connecting the attics, and the whole place looked like the interior of a ship, the little windows high up no larger than portholes. The plaster had not been whitewashed for years, and beams, rafters, and posts were a deep rich brown. Even the floor-boards were of oak, and riddled with worm-holes.
Jasper Benham's prison room was the attic at the far end of the gallery. Its dormer-window was squeezed in between the slopes of two gables. There was no furniture in the attic save a rough box-bed in one corner.
Nor did the bed belong to Jasper. The man Gaston slept there with a pistol under his pillow.
Jasper had been given a truss of straw to lie on. They could not have managed otherwise, for the simple reason that they had put him in irons. His ankles were chained and bolted to the floor-boards, and his wrists handcuffed. He might have been a negro in the hold of a slave ship, or a refractory seaman undergoing discipline.
Both De Rothan and Jeremy Winter were cynics, with the difference that one possessed far more natural kindliness than the other. Their materialism kept its eyes fixed upon the sensuous aspects of life. They knew good wine, and a woman who was worth following, and were ready to be amused by the ingenuous wraths and enthusiasms of youth.
As for De Rothan, he found Jasper a most companionable young person, a man who took his own honourable indignation with vast seriousness, and could be pricked into all manner of odd exasperations. Jasper had not learned to wink at life, or to sneer upon occasions. De Rothan baited his youthful sincerity. He would take his glass of wine and smoke his cheroot in Jasper's attic, sitting on the edge of Gaston's bed, and prodding the Englishman with his cynicism as he would have prodded a pig with a stick. He made a daily habit of this parley, spending an hour or two with his prisoner while Gaston had a change of air in the garden or meadow.
It was the fifth day of his imprisonment, and Jasper heard Gaston's descending footsteps meet those of De Rothan, who ascended to take his place. The Frenchman came in with his glass of wine and his cheroot, bowed ironically to Jasper, and took up his usual position on the bed.
"Well, Mr. Benham, how is the forlorn lover to-day?"
De Rothan's sleekness, his white linen and smoothly shaved face filled Jasper with a kind of fury. He felt himself unclean on his bundle of straw, with a five days' beard on his chin, and his face and hands unwashed. The wound in his right arm was giving him no trouble, but they had not offered to dress it for him, and Nature was responsible for any process of healing.
"Your consideration, Chevalier, does not run to a crock of water and a piece of soap."
"Why, my good sir, what should you want with such things? I might find an old clay pipe and let you blow soap bubbles!"
"It is something to feel clean, especially in the presence of people whose honour happens to be foul."
"We have been taught that it is the heart that matters. Inward cleanliness, eh? You have heard, Mr. Benham, of the old saints and hermits. Dirt and vermin were held to be honourable."
"You would talk in a different way if I were out of these irons."
"Pardon me, my dear young man, I think I should not. Besides, why should you trouble about your beard? The sweet charmer is not likely to see you—though there is pathos about an unshaven chin. Do you think that she troubles——"
He sipped his wine, and watched Jasper over the rim of his glass.
"I drink Miss Nance's health. She is a clever girl, Mr. Benham. How we laughed, she and I! It was funny, although so damnably serious."
"Curse you, what do you mean?"
De Rothan regarded him with infinite relish.
"What an honest soul! You really believe that Miss Durrell wanted me at the end of a rope, and you kneeling romantically at her feet?”
Jasper had nothing adequate to say.
"Nance led you on so cleverly. She sent you off with her blessing to Darvel's Wood. Dear, honest fool!"
"You need not tell me lies about Miss Durrell."
"I don't, sir, I don't. She was kind to you, was she not? When did the kindness begin? Ask yourself that. Was it not when you had blundered like a bumble-bee into our web and seemed likely to give us trouble? Of course Miss Nance was circumspect. She handled you very cunningly, Mr. Benham."
"You need not try to make me believe that."
"It would be impossible? Your vanity is too serene and confident? No woman would have the audacity to treat you like a fool, would she? No, of course not. It would be impossible. Mr. Jasper Benham is too dignified and important a person to be played with."
"Make the most of your tongue, sir."
"Really, you refresh me. When our Emperor is in London, I must present you to him as a unique young man without any sense of humour. You would amuse the Court. You will continue to amuse my dear Nance when she is a great lady of the Empire."
"Don't boast too soon."
"I may as well tell you some news. You will not gossip and spread it abroad. The noble Nelson has been chasing a wild goose instead of your Lady Hamilton. Villeneuve has tricked him. And in a week or two Villeneuve will be blowing your Brest ships out of the water. Then we shall come up Channel, and the Emperor will land in England. It will be a fine spectacle. I shall enjoy it."
"It may prove a very fine spectacle."
"Ah, you dear English—you think yourselves invincible. Are you better men than the Germans, the Austrians, or the Russians? Are your country bumpkins so valiant? Why, our Grand Army will devour you. Think of the American colonists, think of Burgoyne at Saratoga, and Cornwallis at Yorktown. We French have had two years of war. We have fought all Europe. We are veterans, and a nation of soldiers. We shall gallop over you, hunt you hither and thither with the bayonet."
Jasper lay down on his straw.
"It must be a pleasure to you to talk, Chevalier," he said.
Jasper Benham was reliable, and he believed in the reliability of those in whom he trusted. De Rothan's clever mockery might exasperate him, but it did not shake his faith in Nance.
Meanwhile at Stonehanger Nance was strengthening her hold upon her father. The economics of life would seem to be very delicately balanced so far as old men were concerned. They may retain their faculties in a state of fair efficiency so long as no abnormal event interferes with that sanity that is begotten of old habits. But this equilibrium may easily be disturbed, and an illness or a great sorrow may age an old man more in one month than in the ten previous years.
So it seemed to be with Anthony Durrell. The shock of the discovery of his schemes, and the violent ethical attack made upon him by Nance and Jeremy appeared to overthrow his normal self. There was a sudden slackening of all his fibres, both physical and mental. The emotional part of him, so long smothered and overlaid, broke to the surface as the intellect lost some of its ascendency. Then—he appeared to become conscious of the existence of his daughter.
Now Nance had one of those large natures that bears no malice, and is ready to give of its best when an estranged friend stretches out an appealing hand. Her father had become to her a weak and pathetic old man whom the rough virility of younger men shouldered into a corner. She could not be very sorry for Anthony Durrell without being very tender toward him.
For some days her father appeared puzzled by a new atmosphere that enveloped him. Like a man who had been very ill, he was content to sit and muse and stare at nothing in particular. He had led a very lonely life, and a selfish one, since the life of a fanatic and a dreamer is often very selfish. It was now that he felt defeated and feeble that Nance's nature flooded in upon his consciousness.
She would take his chair into the garden under the shade of one of the yews, fetch him the books he loved, read to him, talk to him, try to enter into his thoughts and prejudices. Durrell felt old emotions stirring in his heart. Some of the old gentleness came back. The harsh, thin lines melted out of his face.
The change in him was betrayed by the very way he looked at Nance, and by what he said to her one evening as they sat on the terrace and watched the sun go down. The sea seemed no longer a strip of ominous silver across which the immortal dragon of war should swim to scorch up this green island rich with its yellowing wheat and rolling woods. Durrell had drifted suddenly into the softer evening lights of fife.
He realised that the girl had had a hard and a lonely life.
"Nance, you must often have been very lonely here."
She looked at him in surprise, but with a kind of compassionate radiance.
"I have been less lonely these few days, father."
He seemed to reflect upon these words. And perhaps the warm beauty of the July evening helped the quiet drifting of his thoughts.
"In this life—we make many mistakes."
She nodded as though she understood.
"I used to believe in the efficacy of violence and fear. Curious, in a man of my habits. I have come to doubt whether the quieter forces are not more powerful."
She smiled at him.
"People do hate to be driven."
"To be sure."
"It is easier to persuade them, to play the Pied Piper to the world."
He glanced at her with eyes that asked, "Where did you learn this wisdom?"
And presently he began to speak of De Rothan. It was the first time that he had mentioned the Chevalier's name since his meeting with Jeremy Winter. The adventurer had come to rouse in Durrell a feeling of repulsion. He had allowed himself to realise what manner of man this was whom he had pretended to call friend.
Nance let him talk, even encouraging him to speak of Jasper Benham. Jeremy Winter's anxiety had been unable to convince her that this monstrous piece of kidnapping could be very serious. It was an insolent attempt to extort terms. That was what Nance believed, not knowing the abominable and wanton things of which a revengeful man is capable. De Rothan had not yet taken his change for that rolling in the ditch.
She tried to suggest to Durrell what he should do.
"If the Chevalier de Rothan comes here, father, try and show him how absurd this is. Jasper and Mr. Winter will let him leave the country. They will keep silent—for our sakes."
Durrell looked troubled. Since the change in him he distrusted De Rothan even more than Nance distrusted him.
"This is a difficult man to argue with."
"But what sense is there? Who really believes that the French will land?"
"My dear, I believed it a week ago."
"But not now——"
"It is possible. De Rothan believes it, or he would have been across the water many days ago."
She glanced at her father, and realised once more how weak he was. The one great motive that had inspired him had crumbled away. Even her own sympathy had helped to sap and to undermine his strength.
Every day Jeremy rode over. He was blunt, laconic, but very courteous to Anthony Durrell. There were things that troubled him at Rush Heath, namely, the soothing of Squire Christopher's violent and choleric curiosity. The old man was bedridden, but he fumed for Jasper. Jeremy had told lies, that Jasper was away on duty. The whole household had to be deceived, and Jack Bumpstead kept from gossiping.
But Jeremy had not been able to stand wholly alone. He had been compelled to take Parson Goffin into his confidence, and by that peppery gentleman's advice he had enlarged the circle of trust still further. Certain of Jasper's friends were told the truth. They met at Goffin's, and held a council of war. The situation seemed absurd, even in its gravity. A Sussex gentleman kidnapped and held as a hostage in his own county by a French spy.
Jeremy told Nance all that he had to tell.
"We are having De Rothan's place watched, night and day. They are burning charcoal in a wood half a mile from the house, and one or two fellows have joined the charcoal-burners. If we could only collar De Rothan and his rogues, but they are cunning. They go out singly, and the fellow Gaston is always in the house."
He smiled grimly over the affair.
"Of course—a night attack would be the thing, after we had laid De Rothan by the heels. But there's the risk; I don't like taking it. The scoundrel still rides about as though he were in France. That makes me feel that he means business, and means to let us know it. He dares us to interfere."
"But can nothing be done?"
"I have an idea. I will tell it to you in a day or two."